Board Meeting Minutes 2024
Fort Hunt Softball Board Meeting 2-6-24 Summary
Commissioner Chad Artz- Everything seems to be on track. March is just around the corner and we will be out on the fields! Winter workouts have started and last Sunday the 8U and 10U players worked out in the gym at Walt Whitman MS. West Potomac Softball came with 2 coaches and 6 players to help our girls. It was great. We had 2 FH coaches helping as well. Tom Bratten did a great job organizing the 2 hours!
Player Development Tom Bratten- absent.
Public Relations Jen Goodale- absent- She and Chad talked today about a team store for parents to buy apparel. Facebook page is up and running!
Fundraising- John Gorman- Sponsor update. 10 so far. Half for one season and half for two seasons. It was discussed when ordering uniforms to order one more for each sponsor.
Operations Jason Goodale- Turface and lime prices. Jason found the cheapest prices locally. Estimates $350 gets us a good supply paired with what we already have. The Sandburg shed was cleaned and our equipment in the small plastic box was put in the shed. The small plastic box was moved to Whitman 2 and fits nicely in the 3B dugout. It’s not totally waterproof and we have the space so it’s great. Jason will need help in a couple of weeks to distribute equipment for each field. He is getting familiar with Arbitor, our umpire scheduling process. He will get med kits restocked for each field.
Registrar Karon Curry- 115 registered today. 8U-35, 10U-31, 12U-27, and 18U-22. She has chosen a uniform vendor and made a handy spreadsheet to send with jersey design, size, sock, sponsor, team etc. It will make ordering simple.
Treasurer Elizabeth Lang- She is getting up to speed with how FHYAA uses quickbooks. Our only expenses so far are Whitman gym rental. We currently have $16,323 minus the gym rental (I didn’t write it down). We are not seeing the charges for the opt out fee so that needs to be figured out.
Vice Commissioner Thomas O’Brien – absent. Thomas created a Google Space to host all of our important documents and procedures for current and future Boards. He also has access our web page so he can post Board meeting summaries and other updates.
Old and New Business
New yard signs- 50. 24 put up as of 2-5-24. Videos missing on web site? Thomas now can edit our web site so hopefully can add the missing 12 instructional videos.
Meeting held at the Martha Washington Library, 6-7pm.
Fort Hunt Softball Board Meeting 1-10-24
Summary
Chad Artz (Commissioner) started the meeting discussing changes to the by-laws made at the November Annual General Membership meeting. Specifically, changing the Treasurer to a voting member. He discussed a surplus we had at the end of 2023. Any surplus not spent by 12-31 of that year gets taken by FHYAA. Chad spent around $6,000 on new nets, catcher’s gear, pitching machines, etc. Joining Little League was discussed. It’s a new thought and the pros and cons aren’t clear yet so we decided to have Little League come talk to us.
Thomas O’Brian (Vice Commissioner) discussed his dealings with League Apps, the platform we use to register players, send mass emails, etc. It is useful, but has limitations that might be fixed by also using GameChanger. He is going to set up a Google Drive with Standard Operating Procedures…Assessments, onboarding new board members, etc.
Tom Bratten (Player Development) discussed dates and location for the winter workouts. He also is looking at hiring outside resources to host clinics for our players. The line item for that in the budget is ony $500 so that needs to be looked at for a possible increase going forward.
Elizabeth Lang (Treasurer) discussed the reason for our surplus. We put $5,000 on a line for a scoreboard fund and didn’t “spend” it among a few other things we were below budget. She newly has access to QuickBooks for FHYAA and is getting familiar with its reports for Softball.
Jason Goodale (Operations) discussed his search for local Lime (lining the fields) and Turface (a drying agent). He looks to organize the gear in our main storage shed, change lock combos, fixing, painting or trashing the Whitman 2 storage unit and ideas on how to demonstrate and distribute gear to coaches.
Jen Goodale (Public Relations) is getting on board with our Facebook account, League Apps and will help distribute the new yard signs for softball registration.
Karon Kurry (Registrar) discussed our current numbers at 66. She also is in charge of uniform ordering so she has a list of 3 vendors she will reach out to. League Apps has a way to run a report listing each players’ shirt and sock size so she will use that to order our uniforms at the end of February.
John Gorman (Fundraising) has a goal of raising $6,000. He has 3 sponsors already.
Also in attendance was parent, Amy Dilley.